I remembered I have a blog that I rarely write in. I'm not big on New Year's Resolutions, but it is a good time to think about the future. I'd like to write more, play guitar more, actually learn Japanese, and get one step closer to a fulfilling career. I imagine that very few of those things will happen... but every day is a new opportunity. We'll see how it goes.
Many people, magazines, and television shows take time to review the year in December and January. I thought that I would like to have a year in review for 2011. Because my memory is horrible, the only way to do that is to start documenting this year now.
As far as gaming, I am playing Kingdom Hearts, Fable III and Picross 3D. One of my favorite gaming moments of late last year was playing through the auoran caves in Fable III. I thought voices of the "darkness incarnate" and the uneasyness of your companion was captivating. My husband is currently playing the same part of the game, and he said it seemed non-sequitor, but I strongly disagree since the story hangs on it rather heavily. He has been playing the game sort of sim-style, running around buying houses, doing jobs and whatnot so I think he has lost the actual pace of the story.That is a post for later I guess. Maybe I have some lingering fear of darkness, or maybe the shadowy creatures reminded me of Kingdom Hearts. I don't like playing creepy games, but when they take your control away I find it both annoying and captivating. In Uncharted it was mostly annoying though....
I have yet to purchase a game in 2011, and the first will be Little Big Planet 2 and Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded. Let me just say now that I know it's bad, I know it was a cell phone game and I know that it has gotten horrible ratings. I can only hope that the money they get from me every time I buy one of their crappy KH games (I'm looking at you Chain of Memories) is going a Kingdom Hearts 3 fund. Though, I do feel that Birth by sleep is a respectable addition to the Kingdom Hearts cannon.
I don't think I'll care much for Little Big Planet 2. I like ModNation Racers much more than LBP in the "play, create, share" genre, but it's good to see another company besides Nintendo making high quality, upbeat games. But, I did want the bookends, and just in case, I thought I should have all those download costumes, too.
As I mentioned earlier, I got my husband to willingly play Fable III. Its a big victory for me, the major gamer of the household. Though, I can't take much credit because I think he only wanted to play after he served and messenger between one of his friends and myself. We were sharing Fable III experiences and using him as a intermediate. I think he just wanted to see what all the fuss is about. Since he was a philosophy major, I thought that he would like these highly hypothetical worlds, morals, and choices. He even enjoys science fiction, which is what many games are. Right now, the story is sort of escaping him, because he already knows what will happen and is more interested in making a fortune.
One strange thing in watching someone else play a game you've played is seeing how they perceive it differently and make different little choices. When it's someone you are very close to, like a spouse, it's sort of enlightening. You can see how you view an objective situation differently. I often want to get straight to the point, not talk a bunch of fluff and skip to the action. He browses around more and takes indirect routes. As we (hopefully) play more of the same games, I think it could help us to understand each other in the real world.
I think some of the best video game journalism lies in personal accounts of how games impact the writer and what they perceive the roles of games to be. I have done much more casual gaming in the last year, and it has changed my opinion on the non-committal gamer. But, I think casual games for phones are much better with the success of the app store and android market. I still can't feel justified in paying more than a dollar for one, because.... I still don't think it's a real game. I think real games are console games and PC games, but phone games are mostly time-wasters and line-waiters. It's been fun to play games while at the bank, or the grocery and I think that it has helped general impatience in retail, but it's rarely something I will carve out time at home to play.
Well, those are my new year new thoughts. I might expand some in later posts where appropriate.
